Name: To Dress Fish
Ingredients: 1 pint good stock; 2 ounces butter; flour (as needed); Cayenne pepper (to taste); anchovy essence (to taste); juice of 1 Seville orange; sugar (to taste); bacon (enough to cover the fish)

Why it works: Anchovy and fish work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Cover the fish with bacon and place it in a baking dish.
Add 1 pint of good stock and bake until done, depending on the size of the fish.
Remove the fish from the baking dish and strain the cooking liquid.
Skim off the fat from the liquid.
In a saucepan, melt 2 ounces of butter.
Add enough flour to absorb the butter and dry it up.
Pour the strained cooking liquid into the saucepan and boil for a few minutes.
Strain the sauce through a fine sieve into another saucepan.
Season the sauce with Cayenne pepper, add a little anchovy essence, the juice of the Seville orange, and a bit of sugar.
Place the fish on a serving dish and pour the sauce over it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,402 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, anchovy, sugar, fish):

Lemonfits better
Raisinfits better
Limefits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, anchovy, sugar, fish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.